‘Night Witches’ Roamed the Russian Skies During WWII
LatestDuring World War II, decades before the U.S. military deigned to consider women for front-line combat jobs, Russian teenage girls and young women dropped 23,000 tons of bombs on German invaders while commandeering crop dusters. The Nazis called them the “night witches.”
The volunteer’s stories do sound straight out of Harry Potter: they flew in pitch black darkness, maps and compasses were their only weapons, and their planes were as flimsy as sheets of paper if hit by a bullet.